Archive for February 12, 2010

After spending a few extra days out west it certainly feels good to be back in Maryland. There really is no place like home. I took a little time tonight to add up our travel expenses and realized we spent very little while we were away.

Before our trip I cooked a hodgepodge of recipes that allowed us to clean out all sorts of odd ingredients in our fridge. The best was a baked potato soup recipe I made that enabled us to eat all the remaining cheese, sour cream, baked potatoes, onions and two slices of bacon that otherwise would have made their way into the trash.

Before we left I also washed and sliced the remaining celery and carried it onto the plane with a small green apple and a container of peanut butter. That snack really hit the spot as we driving from the airport to our hotel. On the way back to Baltimore I also packed bananas and oranges and enjoyed them on the flight home.

We cooked dinner all but two nights of our eight day stay. One night, when I was desperate to get out of our condo, my husband and I walked around town and found a quaint little restaurant where we ate club sandwiches and burgers. The price of that dinner was worth every single penny. We also ordered Chinese takeout one of the nights while we were away.

We spent roughly $150 on food while we were on vacation. A big chunk of that money was spent the night we went out to dinner and on meals at the airport. We ate lunch at a sit down restaurant before heading out west and picked up dinner just before our flight home to Baltimore. The rest was spent on various trips to the grocery store.

We cooked a variety of inexpensive soups each night after dinner and heated them up just before lunch. We also saved money by purchasing inexpensive fish, like Tilapia, and buying ground beef rather than steaks. It also helped that our food expenses were split among four other people.